CAIRNGORMS

NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

UGH­DAR­RAS PAIRC NAISEANTA Α’ MHON­AIDH RUAIDH

Cairngorms Equal­ity Advis­ory Panel

25^th May 2021

5:00pm — 6:30pm — Held virtually

Minutes

Present:

Fiona McLean (Chair)	Anita Howard
Heath­er Earnshaw	Kirsteen Allis­on
Kev­in Hutchens	Linda Bam­ford
Vanessa Alt­weck

In Attend­ance:

Kate Christie	Vicky Walk­er
Louisa McDaid (Cap­tion­er)	Gail (Cap­tion­er)
Andy Ford	Kath­er­ine Willing
Pip Mack­ie	Oliv­er Davies
Pete Crane	Jacki Mun­ro

Apo­lo­gies: Bo, Pammy, Peter and Gemma

1. Intro­duc­tion

1.1. Fiona wel­comed every­one to the meet­ing and the minutes from the pre­vi­ous meet­ing were approved by the group. 1.2. Fiona reminded the group that if any­one would like a one-to-one meet­ing to get in con­tact via the equal­it­ies email address.

2. Equal­ity Main­stream­ing Report – Kate Christie

2.1. Kate explained that CNPA pub­lished the Equal­it­ies Main­stream­ing report on time and in line with require­ments. How­ever, Kate felt that the report required more work and this would be under­taken over sum­mer. 2.2. Kate asked the pan­el what suc­cesses can be picked up when read­ing the paper, how are we able to cel­eb­rate these and which areas could be improved upon. Secondly, Kate asked for any addi­tion­al com­ments on the equal­it­ies outcomes.

Response from Pan­el 2.3. The pan­el iden­ti­fied a num­ber of pos­it­ive aspects of the report and equal­it­ies work of CNPA, such as;

• The pan­el
• Mean­ing­ful engage­ment with stake­hold­ers on equal­it­ies work, it was felt this should be shown earli­er in the report so as not to dilute its importance.
• Equal­ity Impact Assessments
• Gender bal­ance work, the report reflects that CNPA has not met the Seni­or Man­age­ment tar­get but has achieved the middle man­age­ment tar­get and con­tin­ues to increase the num­ber of female applicants.
• CNPA’s genu­ine interest in equal­it­ies is reflec­ted in the report, it was sug­ges­ted that the report should show more that CNPA not only takes the Pub­lic Sec­tor Equal­ity Duty (PSED) ser­i­ously but act­ively tries to push bey­ond the min­im­al oblig­a­tion set out in the PSED. 2.4. The pan­el iden­ti­fied a num­ber of sug­ges­tions of what they felt was miss­ing from the report, such as;
• There should be more focus on the work being done with stakeholders.
• There should be more inform­a­tion included on work being done to inform those without IT access of the work in the nation­al park and how to access it.
• There should be an action plan which shows how CNPA aim to involve dis­abled people in explor­ing nature and the environment.
• There should be more visu­al graph­ics, such as infograph­ics, to help demon­strate the data. It is import­ant to include images which are rep­res­ent­at­ive of all groups and ensure they have descrip­tions for those using screen readers.
• There should be more con­sid­er­a­tion of the lan­guage used. It was felt it was import­ant to use the social mod­el of dis­ab­il­ity as this is what is used in the UK. For example, a dis­abled per­son instead of a per­son with a dis­ab­il­ity. This reflects how indi­vidu­als are dis­abled by soci­ety as opposed to a dis­ab­il­ity being a bur­den we carry with us. 2.5. The pan­el iden­ti­fied a num­ber of sug­ges­tions of shad­ow areas in the report, such as;
• The gender pay gap needs to be addressed at both ends of the spec­trum, it is import­ant to have this at in top man­age­ment roles but also in lower graded roles.
• More work could be done on encour­aging shared par­ent­al leave for CNPA staff, this could include case studies.
• There could be more inform­a­tion included in the report on ensur­ing that people on low incomes con­tin­ue to vis­it the park post pandemic.
• The CNPA could increase their links with men­tal health char­it­ies. 2.6. The pan­el also gave some sug­ges­tions on the revised equal­it­ies out­comes stated in the report, such as;
• Each out­come has a dif­fer­ent approach to how they have been writ­ten. For example, out­come one is very detailed where­as out­come two is a lot broad­er. They may all need to be writ­ten in the same style so that it is not implied that one out­come has more weight­ing than another.
• It is import­ant to tie the equal­it­ies out­comes into CNPA’s organ­isa­tion­al strategy so that it becomes embed­ded into daily operations.

3. Item 2: Future Face to Face Meeting

3.1. CNPA would like to hold a face to face meet­ing for the pan­el at some point but acknow­ledge when this has been dis­cussed pre­vi­ously, there has been some hes­it­a­tion. CNPA would like to make this access­ible for all pan­el mem­bers and ideally invite seni­or man­age­ment to part of the meet­ing. The pan­el was asked how we can make a face to face event access­ible for the pan­el members.

Response from Pan­el 3.2. The pan­el dis­cussed that tim­ing would be very import­ant due to Cov­id. Although it is later the group dis­cussed how spring 2022 could be more appro­pri­ate as it means more of the meet­ing would be able to take place out­doors. 3.3. Access­ib­il­ity would need to be care­fully con­sidered. This would include look­ing bey­ond the meet­ing itself and con­sid­er­ing aspects such as travel and accom­mod­a­tion as well. 3.4. The pan­el sug­ges­ted that it may be help­ful to have vir­tu­al options avail­able for the meet­ing as well so that those who did not feel com­fort­able with face to face meet­ings at the time could still be included and listened too. 3.5. The pan­el were all sup­port­ive of a longer meet­ing in which seni­or man­age­ment could attend. 3.6. The pan­el also sug­ges­ted that if the face-to-face meet­ing is going to be sev­er­al months away, hav­ing a vir­tu­al cof­fee morn­ing for the pan­el mem­bers to get to know each oth­er bet­ter may be helpful.

4. Any Oth­er Business

4.1. Communications/​equalities dis­cus­sion – Fol­low­ing research pub­lished by the Equal­ity and Human Rights Com­mis­sion show­ing that those with little or no access to IT had lost out. The pan­el would appre­ci­ate a future dis­cus­sion on how the Park Author­ity cur­rently com­mu­nic­ates with those who are not able to access IT or who have low lit­er­acy levels. It was agreed that Oliv­er Dav­is, Head of Com­mu­nic­a­tions, would be invited to a future meet­ing to dis­cuss this topic.

Next Meet­ing 29^th June

End of Meeting